Petition for Official iTunes Sales Report Download API

Every developer with apps in the store has this problem: You have to download your daily reports within 7 days or you loose the information. Several methods have been developed to deal with this, some on individual computers (AppViz), some on web sites (appfigures.com) and some mobile (My App Sales). But all of those have the same problem: to get to the report data they have to scrape the iTunes Connect website.

A practise that Apple tolerates, but does not like. Where Apple has a say, they reject apps for the app store that do that, citing 3.3.7 of the SDK Agreement. And they add “There is no public API allowing information from iTunes Connect to be used in the manner demonstrated by your application.”

And that’s what this petition is for. I don’t want to establish a website for it just yet, but first I am trying to get people aware that we all should post a bug report at http://bugreport.apple.com/ and post your “vote” there by requesting “iTunes Sales Report Download API” from them. Apple collects these reports and when a certain number of people request the same functionality then Apple will be compelled to fulfill their user’s wish.

On the free market it is good to have developers compete who has the best report analysis software, but currently competition revolves around who has tricked Apple the best. By providing such an API, Apple would not only make developers really happy but create a basis of fair development of report analysis and charting tools on all possible platforms.